ReelTime: Rams (Icelandic title: Hrútar) Written and Directed by Grímur Hákonarson Starring Sigurdur Sigurjónsson and Theódór Júlíusson
Rams is the story of two brothers, Gummi and Kiddi. They’re both gruff, they both have a characteristically Icelandic affection for their sheep, and, as the story goes, they both have flocks that have been recently infected with scrapie, a disease impacting the central nervous system of sheep. The men, both in their sixties, haven’t spoken to each other for forty years, even though they’ve lived within a hundred feet of each other on the same block of land their whole lives. Scrapie is bad news for the community, whose livelihood revolves around the sheep that will consequently require slaughtering.
And because it’s Gummi who initially discovers the sheep’s infection in Kiddi’s award-winning flock, it’s bad news for the two men who until now have had little cause to speak to one another. It’s never explicitly mentioned why the two brothers aren’t on speaking terms, but a wild stab in the dark would guess that it has something to do with the fact that Gummi was solely bequeathed by his father to the land that he and his brother now begrudgingly reside on.
Decades-long resentments run high in Rams, a movie sheepishly touted as a comedy, though it’s probably more of a drama with the occasional funny scene (bearded Icelandic men shouting monosyllabic profanities at their sheep as a means of rounding them up probably wasn’t intended as funny). The film’s vivid views of Iceland’s grassy plains and sweeping snow storms manages to emphasise the isolated tragedy of the two brothers’ absurd feud, and adds an element of sombreness to the additional hurt that losing one’s livelihood would entails. Nevertheless, the movie’s charm is understated. This is due in part to the bleakness of the Icelandic pastoral landscapes, Director Hákonarson’s minimalist approach to verbal dialogue, and the blunt familiarity with which the two brothers seem to convey their respective points.
It’s not all bleakness, however. Although the two brothers interactions are short and blunt, their petty rift manifests itself in some elaborate, comical ways: Kiddi blasting his neighbouring brother’s house with a shotgun to communicate his resentment; both brothers’ use of a scene-snatching border collie to relay messages so as to avoid actual conversations; Gummi delivering his drunken brother’s passed out body to the nearest emergency room via the bucket of a dirt mover.
Rams’ ending, although somewhat abrupt, isn’t disappointing. Culminating with a very intimate embrace between the two brothers in a blizzard after attempting to escort Gummi’s hidden sheep, the viewer is left with a sense of life’s uncanny ability to mend the rift between a family’s burned bridges, and to warm some hearts along the way. I give it three stars.
Jimmy Bartel really is a gutsy man to have shared his story yesterday in Melbourne’s The Herald Sun. The article details the AFL player’s experience with the domestic violence his father perpetrated against him, his siblings, and his mother growing up.
Picture courtesy of the Herald Sun
The article’s pros are that it raises awareness about the insidiousness of domestic violence and the trauma it causes. It centres on a man discussing his recollections of domestic violence as a child. This is not the typical narrative we hear about domestic violence either in the media or in the community. Women are the victims, men are the perpetrators, and that’s that. By circulating the article, a grey area in an already complicated issue is revealed, and a typical narrative is challenged. And that’s a good thing. Further, children are rarely spoken of as perhaps the biggest victims of this type of violence. Children don’t choose the relationships they’re exposed to, but they nevertheless adapt to them, and it’s in their adaptation that their developmental needs are thwarted.
Those are the pros, not necessarily negated by the cons discussed below. So, what are the cons? First, I take issue with the Herald Sun referring to a person’s addictions as their “evils”. Trauma begets trauma, and Jimmy’s father clearly had his demons. By the grace of God, as they say, Jimmy Bartel did not become the man his father was. This could be due to the difference in socio-economic status between the two men, as well as the changing views on masculinity, male and female sex roles, and on the awareness we have around appropriate child-rearing practices. In any case, children learn vicariously, which means they emulate what they see. Thus, we know both from a plethora of research and intrinsically that a person exposed to such violence is far more inclined to perpetuate such behaviour than not. Upon closer inspection, perhaps the article is celebrating Jimmy’s luck as much as his courage.
Jimmy Bartel also makes it clear that his father had gambling and drinking addictions. This makes his father an addict, and addicts are characteristically shame-based people. But people are not inherently shameful; they learn it from their own caregivers, for better or worse. In many ways, addicts are our community’s most vulnerable people. The article thus demonises and victimises people with addictions – vulnerable people – and I take issue with this Us versus Them mentality. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that Jimmy Bartel suffers from his own, perhaps less “traditional”, more socially accepted addictions, such as sex, love, food, or approval (codependence) addiction. Or perhaps his own mental health problems, such as issues surrounding body image or low self-esteem, which he arguably alludes to. How could he not have his own issues given the upbringing he describes?
Understandably, such addictions are still too taboo or poorly defined, collectively less understood, to discuss openly and without reprise. This is unfortunate. But it does raise the question: Would the Herald Sun demonise Jimmy Bartel if we were to learn that he has his own addictions? How swift would his fall from grace be if he were to step out of the lines this newspaper has painted him in to? To take a more compassionate view of addicts, and of the people who perpetrate violence, would probably betray the moral boundaries the Herald Sun has decided should be the norm for its readers, and I take issue with this too.
Another con of this article is that the Herald Sun has historically, notoriously and often shamelessly touted its very own interests to the detriment of what can arguably be ‘objectively true’ – as much as something can be – and this, to me, lessens its credibility. A media organisation should strive for objectivity, and while all media organisations fall short of this objective by virtue of the fact that they’re run by humans who are fallible, the Herald Sun doesn’t appear to ever really strive for this objectivity to begin with. This makes it difficult to take seriously anything it produces. Its reputation precedes it, regardless of how altruistic-seeming its articles are.
The Herald Sun also has a history of subtly and overtly objectifying its readership. Woman and men are portrayed in traditional ways, with women as sex objects and victims, and men as offenders who are then just as quickly demonised for falling short of some constantly shifting ideal. Just look at the public beating and shaming that Richmond football club’s Dustin Martin took in the media for his violent behaviour towards a woman in a restaurant. What’s the bet he was the victim of domestic violence and emotional neglect too? Should we take an all-or-nothing view of him because of his actions and cast him out also? Do we negate this possibility and just label him a troublemaker, as the Herald Sun did? Issues surrounding the perpetration of violence are usually complex, and the Herald Sun seems to ignore this complexity in what could be seen as the latest in a series of moral crusades. The message the Herald Sun provides is thus inconsistent, and seems a broader exercise in black-or-white thinking. If the article were a stand alone one not associated with the Herald Sun, perhaps it would carry more weight, but it’s not, and it doesn’t.
No doubt, Jimmy Bartel was brave to share his story. And the article does indeed give coverage to an issue that’s close to my heart and my experience. But it’s hard not to be cynical about the paper that gives him his platform to do so. I take such articles with a grain of salt, but am happy to see that the issue of domestic violence is being pushed in to public consciousness from the perspective of the biggest and most vulnerable victim – the child, who in turn may become the perpetrator ((Jimmy Bartel’s father, perhaps) of such violence. Such people are destined to become the misunderstood, offending, addicted and victimised adult so long as newspapers like the Herald Sun opt for a simple take on a complex issue.
Indeed, in order for change to occur both at a grassroots and systemic level, people need concrete examples of how one thing affects another, and this article perhaps offers us this. When the Herald Sun and other media outlets responsibly convey the inherent complexity of issues such as domestic violence, then our society can move toward a more compassionate view of the vulnerable groups that comprise addicts, prostitutes, and those we might consider ‘disenfranchised’. This in turn will force governments to create policy that reflects this reality, which can only be a good thing. But we might be waiting a while for that to happen so long as newspapers like the Herald Sun abuse their power rather than use it to educate the public.
An old family friend commented on one of my blogs about a week ago. He said that while he respected my memories of growing up, he didn’t recall the emotional abuse and neglect that I spoke of in my recent blog post. The only memories he could recall were of my being loved and respected by my family. Nor did he believe that my parents were anything but caring and nurturing. Besides being a covert challenge to my authenticity and the credibility of my memories, his comments did get me a little panicked about whether my abuse was “objectively true”. I questioned whether I could really trust my experiences of growing up in my family. The voice that whispers, “You’re fucking insane, man, and everyone else thinks this too” crept in. Could I be wrong? Could all those visits to psychiatric wards (both voluntary and involuntary), the suicide attempts, the confusion, the panic and shame attacks, the alienation and chronic fear of intimacy – could all that have been the result of some chemical imbalance, something unfixable, or inherently arbitrary? Could my parents have been as loving and nurturing as this friend of the family seems to recall?
I decided to delve deeper in to my memories. Perhaps my experiences of my dad insistently berating my mum for every damn thing she did wrong, insulting her intelligence and her dignity were not real memories, or at the very least were not real instances of domestic violence. Perhaps the memory of having to cover my ears to muffle the overwhelming booming sound of my father’s voice as he hurled insults at her and at us in the car trips to Sydney at the age of twelve didn’t really feel as though my fragile boundaries were being shattered. That even though I felt like a trapped rat in a cage with a cat, I couldn’t escape my family? That this feeling felt threatening to my very survival?
If the authenticity of all these experiences were subject to questioning, then maybe other memories were too. Shit, maybe I didn’t really have those thoughts of wanting to kill my dad when I heard him hit my mum in the other room, and maybe I didn’t really feel all that powerless when he would storm in to my room and proceed to hit me and my siblings too. Perhaps being whipped with a belt at the age of five was common practice, along with threats to “Shut up, or I’ll do it again!” Perhaps I developed an identical inner dialogue whenever I feel a similar feeling of distress out of nowhere, and perhaps I am intrinsically hostile towards myself for no apparent reason. Still, I played devil’s advocate in my head, wanting to be sure that I’d covered all bases; there was still a chance that my family friend was not ignorant, and rather that he knew what he was talking about. Years of psychotherapy had imbued in me the sense that other people were the experts on my life, and that I couldn’t trust my own crazy mind. Doctor knows best. Such a dangerous mentality to foster. Nevertheless I thought to myself, ‘Even if such memories were that bad, maybe my parents were still nurturing, loving, and caring. After all, they’d provided a roof over my head and kept food in my belly. What was I complaining about? My basic needs were being met, and I wasn’t homeless. My basic needs were met…And besides, I turned out alright, right?
…Well, no, not exactly. I’m not saying that I’m a hopeless case – far from it. The best years are still to come I’m sure. But taking an honest inventory of one’s self means just that. In the last fifteen years I’ve: been hospitalised voluntarily and involuntarily; been called a liar and told to get over it by my father, stepmother, and extended family members; been victimized by the mental health system, by clinicians who told me to swallow pills that made me put on 15-20kgs, and that numbed my feelings of rage and grief – feelings that needed to be out rather than in – and when the pills didn’t work I was told that I was “treatment-resistant.” I’ve been chronically bullied in school systems by teachers and peers, chronically unemployed at times and underemployed all of the time, and I’ve been told that it’s “just depression and anxiety: the common cold of psychology.” Truth is, at face value I look like the guy with it all, though I’ve suffered chronic low self-esteem. Something’s amiss, surely.
Which begs the question again: Am I wrong to call a spade a spade just because someone calls it something else? Were my experiences not as bad as all that? And if they were that bad, perhaps there really is something inherently backward about me to not have “gotten over it” by now? Perhaps I really am treatment resistant? Hmm? Well?
…Well, the answer is Nah. As in Nah, fuckthat. I am unequivocally right. I know what I experienced, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to entertain someone else’s denial or ignorance. Been there, done that, and got the t-shirt that says “It Doesn’t Work To Do It That Way.” Part of my recovery is to set internal boundaries, to stop listening to the people who try to instill in me, for their own personal or professional reasons, why I shouldn’t feel a certain way or question whether a certain thing really happened in my past. I see those people now as dead weight on the recovery journey. Because really, what do they know? Were they there? Can they really be so arrogant as to tell me what my reality was? What it is? Do they realise how ridiculous it sounds to tell someone that what they experienced didn’t happen the way that they remember?
I’m not sure. I’m powerless over others, but not over myself. Now, I start to recognise when someone is trying to deny my reality. I put my breaks on it as best I can. Though it’s rarely expressed as such, I am mindful of words people use like “ought to” and “should” to describe my recovery journey. When I share my reality, and when the response is a vague or sharply defined sense of ‘No’, I give myself permission to mobilise, to set standards for who’s worthy of my time and my reflection, and to walk the other way. That’s my right in recovery, because recovery is and always should be self-defined. Case closed.
Perhaps one of the hardest things about being unemployed and living with complex PTSD is how quickly the old patterns of thinking can re-enter my consciousness. It’s impeccable – and frightening. If it can be said that our thoughts are a precursor to our actions, then the negative thinking that I’ve reluctantly embraced is leading to some evidently low level, self-destructive behaviour.
It’s tough. Everyone wants to feel like they’re needed, like they’re useful. It’s no different for me, either. The trauma I want so desperately to be rid of seems lately to be robbing me of the belief that I have something worthwhile to contribute, more now that I am unemployed than before. And it’s stifling. I find myself going in to fantasy, getting to bed later, eating junk foods that are consumed at a cost to both my hip pocket and my health. I’m talking to friends less too, and feeling frightened at the prospect of leaving the house. I’m bunkering down for a storm, and I’m going in to survival mode. Notably, none of it is helping me to deal with my adult problems.
And if I do leave my house, I leave my body too. I dissociate. Maybe this is the hardest part about C-PTSD. The disconnection that accompanies any circumstance that is merely perceived as threatening or overwhelming. I catch myself becoming adamant that I can’t cope, that I won’t, and that I refuse to, too. Every situation becomes evidence for my hyper-vigilant, outspoken Inner Critic that I’m not faring so well. The “See? I told you that you couldn’t cope!” storyline plays on repeat. God, it’s irritating.
Such toxic thinking. The world of a trauma survivor is apt to get claustrophobic quickly without the necessary tools to manage this feeling of collapsing and shrinking in to oblivion. And even then, it ain’t easy. Intellectually, I understand that I am simply feeling overwhelmed, and that if I just bring myself back to the present moment and do the next best thing to take care of myself, I’ll probably be OK. The path to recovery is at times a nightmarish paradox: do the thing that feels most frightening and you’ll thrive; stay present at all costs, and it’ll pass. So this is what I’m doing, to the best of my ability.
Numbing out is a fantastic strategy when you’re small, helpless, and reliant on giants to provide your safety and your broader needs for touch, emotional nurturing and physical safety. But what happens when they’re not met? What happens when such caretakers are narcissistic? Or abusive? Emotionally volatile or manipulative, and physically violent? I won’t speak for all people who grew up in domestic violence family systems, but I know that for me, I became an exquisite ‘dissociater’ at the slightest hint of confrontation or perceived threat. I jumped ship, so to speak, and abandoned myself with record-breaking rapidity. The reality back then was too painful because, as it turned out, the giants entrusted with ensuring my basic survival needs were the very ones threatening them. Thus, numbing my senses seemed like an entirely sensible thing to do!
It’s tough, and a little bit tragic, too. Because I know that the degree to which I felt unsafe as a child directly correlates with the amount of energy I now unconsciously put in to numbing out to survive. That’s the tragedy: that I must have been thoroughly terrified, and consistently so, throughout my formative years. The tough part is that a very dominant part of me still sees these strategies as totally viable and effective ways for dealing with all types of threat, be they proximal or distant, physical or abstract. It makes being gentle on myself hard, and creates in me a sense of incongruence which is unnerving and uncomfortable. And while outwardly I’m looking for paid work, I know I’m already holding down the full-time job of re-wiring my hyper-aroused brain with self-soothing techniques. You might say I’m doin’ double-overtime, and the penalty rates ain’t payin’ dividends just yet.
Changing these patterns is a lifelong process that requires support, hard work, and a lot of good luck. Threats to where I live and the prospect of working yet another stressful, underpaying job that underutilises my intellect and my potential make it hard to feel safe, and hopeful. This is where I’m at right now: finding and creating zones of safety in which to heal. Even starting a job that draws on my strengths is stressful because it brings up traumatic feelings and self-defeating thinking patterns from eons ago which, if not managed well, lead to overwhelm all over again, to quitting, and to the despair of being right back where I started.
So you see, it’s a really tough gig. I see it as an exercise in being broken down and re-created each time I fall and have to pick myself up again. A stable place to live, as well as a regular income from a job that affirms my personal philosophy and draws on my experience, is a by-product of recovery from trauma that protects me from relapses. Such things, though, are also pre-requisites for recovery. Herein lies the frustrating injustice of a person suffering under the sticky label of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress disorder. I’m fortunate enough to be able to articulate this, though as yet such eloquence hasn’t eased my burden or magically secured me a stable dwelling and a vocation that makes my heart sing.
There’s hope, though, because I’m a stubborn mother. In spite of growing up in a traumatic and unforgiving family system, in spite of the empty promises of a broken mental health system and in spite of the ill-offered advice from psychiatrists, with their over-emphasis on medicating feelings and ignoring the body’s wisdom, I’m still here, still being broken and still being reconstructed; the best is surely still to come!
It should go without saying that children are people too. Of course they are. So when a person is violated by means of power, coercion, or while under duress, they experience rage like any other because their rights and their boundaries have been infringed upon. This fact continues to be overlooked (or ignored) by those who insist on sparing the rod and spoiling the child. Nevertheless, children lack the aforementioned verbal skills required to articulate such violation. And practically speaking, a child is small, weak, and quite literally dependent on his abusive caregiver’s resources (e.g., love, attention, food, shelter) for survival. It thus makes sense for him to mute the objections he is capable of uttering when his rights are violated (e.g., crying, raging, outbursts of physical violence) to ensure his ongoing needs are met. This leads to a tragic and insane learned helplessness, and rather than rage fruitlessly, the child learns to adapt to his abusive family system.
Children are extremely resourceful, and so adaption takes many unique forms. But research (and theory, to pay Freud his dues) has for some time pointed to clusters of adaptive processes that children engage in when their caregivers are neglectful, abusive, or both.
Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn, Fuck, Feed: The six childhood responses to developmental trauma For children to survive the trauma of being emotionally, psychologically, sexually or spiritually abused by their caregivers, they develop specific coping mechanisms Here’s my take on what these mechanisms are. It’s worth mentioning here that I have a BA in psychology. Funnily enough, though, I learned most of what I am about to discuss in this article not through studying undergrad textbooks, but through my own personal experience of and consequent research on childhood trauma.
The Fight Type. Fight types don’t hold back their rage, but nor do they learn to control it in adulthood. Prone to outbursts and tantrums, people with this coping style learned early that, in order to have their needs met they had to become hostile, or go without. Rage is learned through modeling, and can lead to aggressive and anti-social tendencies without appropriate figures to re-model such behaviour. Domestic violence, physical, verbal and sexual assault, as well as more extreme acts of violence like murder are common means of acting out that Fight types engage in. But often the fight type find socially acceptable ways to use and abuse power, and may work they way to positions of authority in Government or in corporate life (e.g., the ‘charming psychopath’) These forms of acting out are used as a means of controlling their circumstances and other people to establish an internal sense of equilibrium, usually when they experience threat.
The Flight Type. Though it could be said that all adults who develop one or more of the six coping styles as a means of escaping the pain of trauma, Flight types are the escapists who’ve honed the skill of numbing out to a T. They run from life’s problems and from the feelings that accompany them. They numb pain through alcohol or drugs, or develop soloist hobbies that allow them to isolate from people and community – the perceived sources of threat – often in socially or culturally acceptable ways (e.g. online gaming, various IT professions). One way that Fight types escape is through fantasy. This can take the form of dissociation (i.e., numbing, zoning or checking out behaviours) to more severe severances from reality (e.g., through the experience of visual and auditory hallucinations, obscure beliefs about self and others, and paranoia). To the very sick Flight type, such breaks from reality act as very powerful distraction from the experience of emotions in the present moment. Arguably, many people diagnosed with schizophrenia or various other psychiatric illnesses have developed exceptional flight behaviours to avoid life’s inevitable stressors. When I think of Flight types, I think of Blanche Dubois from A Streetcar Named Desire.
The Freeze Type. Freeze types do exactly that: they freeze in the presence of perceived threat, and suffer the consequences dearly. Those in this category seem to typify the premise of researchers like Alice Miller and Bessel Van der Kolk aptly. That is, that trauma remains frozen in the body until it is released through a safe and therapeutic re-experiencing of it. Freeze types especially are prone to re-enact the abuse they originally suffered in childhood by choosing partners or lovers similar to their abusive caregivers. This is known as repetition compulsion, which is the repeated attempt a trauma victim makes to ‘finish the feeling’, that is, to finally find the caregiver who will show them the love and protection they craved in childhood. Repetition compulsion explains why many women abused in childhood women continually “end up with” abusive partners in adulthood.
The Fawn Type. Fawn types develop codependent tendencies. They’re apt to unconsciously cultivate a ‘helper’ mentality in the hope that their caregiver will meet their needs, or at the very least disengage from abusive or neglectful behaviour. Unfortunately, many codependents end up being complicit in their own abuse or trauma, much like freeze types. Fawn types can be perpetrators too, by acting highly agreeable, sacrificing their own values or beliefs, and being manipulative or dishonest – all dishonest forms communication – as a way to get heir needs met or to avoid the experience of their own or another’s negative feelings. Because Fawn Types did not have their needs met in childhood, they learn to manipulate outcomes through more ‘passive’ means, such as through blackmail, ‘guilting’ or playing the ‘martyr’, rather than through honest and direct communication which, in reality, they were never taught or modeled in their formative years.
The Fuck Type. ‘Fuck’ is something of a misnomer, though it’s appropriate all the same. Children who discover sex, inappropriate touching, or masturbation as a means of dealing with their neglectful, abusive or otherwise emotionally unbearable circumstances discover the pleasure their bodies can provide during high stress situations. Having not been taught the value of experiencing and trusting their emotional experiences, adult Fuck types may develop sex, love or porn pornography addictions to soothe intense emotions. Such addictive patterns include engaging in sexually risky or perverse behaviour (like exhibitionism and voyeurism), to more extreme perpetration involving rape or child sexual abuse. Arguably, Western Culture has a collective preference for the Fuck type’s adaptiveness. This is when we give pause to the highly profitable porn industry (supply and demand, right?), the escalating sexualisation of women – and increasingly men – in popular culture and in commerce (“Sex Sells”), and the quiet yet alarming sexualisation of children. Indeed, one needn’t look far to see the droves of sports stars and religious leaders whose fall from grace has involved inappropriate sexual escapades.
The Feed Type. Feed types learn early in childhood that food is their most important need, and so seek to idolize it. Emotional neglect and abuse leaves a child feeling overwhelmed in the face of their own volatile feelings. Feed types also understandably believe that caregivers ultimately disappoint, but food won’t. Obesity, as well as other eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, is common in the Feed Type, as are many of the symptoms of body dysmorphia – self-loathing, shame, disgust, and a distorted view of oneself.
As you can see, people who suffer emotional, sexual, psychological, or spiritual abuse at the hands of their caregivers are prone to develop self-destructive -albeit universal -coping mechanisms in order to deal with the trauma of consistently having their needs unmet in their formative years. In a later post I will discuss what current research is demonstrating are our best hopes for breaking free from the shackles of childhood trauma.
That feeling of falling, do you know it? I feel it from time to time. Usually it’s in the morning, in a semi-conscious state, when my eyes are crusted with the mildew of dreams well and truly dreamed. But sometimes it’s felt during the day, at work. During a meeting that requires face time with colleagues, or when I’m sitting in the War Room with my boss, going over the metrics – those damned KPIs – that determine whether I’m still worth my salt in salary. It’s that internal sense of being on a roller coaster ride, and the screws are loose on the track up ahead. Not a great way to ride life’s dips and turns, let alone a roller coaster.
Lately, I am trying to hand over this falling-feeling, and the self-willfulness that accompanies it, to something bigger than me. I know, I know. I don’t want to be the guy who talks about Jesus as his savior. So I won’t. I won’t be that guy (you’re welcome). I’m sure Jesus was a top bloke, but he ain’t my savior. No. But when I talk about something greater, I am talking about God. You can replace the word God with the Universe, or with Higher Power or Jimmy Fallon, if that helps you to swallow these here musings on something greater than me. Whatever floats your spiritual boat, ay.
I just know I can’t do recovery from complex-PTSD on my own. I’ve tried, and it didn’t work. On more than one occasion, my efforts resulted with me in the high-dependency unit of a psych ward, discussing with a fellow patient the merits of doing star jumps to gain the pretty – albeit equally crazy – girl’s attention. Insanity. Everyone knows that star jumps don’t get the pretty girl, least of all in the HD unit of your local psych hospital. Nope. Truth is, without some thing bigger than me in my life, I’m lost to my own insanity. My thinking’s twisted; the lens with which I filter the world is foggy and smudged, and maybe a little cracked, too. So I need something big enough to fix said lens, or something that will replace it with the promise of something clearer, more transparent, to see me through rough times.
Enter God. I know I can’t trust most of my thoughts, so I try not to. I hand them over and try to stay present to myself. Complex-PTSD is a disorder of the past, I’ve said many times. That is, I’m not here and now. Rather, I’m off somewhere back then, when dad was yelling at mum, or hitting me, or when I was getting bullied at school. All traumas that have no bearing on my physical safety anymore. Yet I feel their collective weight baring down on my shoulders still. Emotional baggage? Sure. Do you take carry on too?
Life’s uncertainties make this unpleasant feeling of free-falling arch up though. The great unknown’s not that great, let me tell you. It’s filled with niggling questions like “How are you going to pay rent without a job?”; “When are you going to stop being so afraid to put yourself out there and live the life you want to live?” and “Why can’t you just let go?” They’re uncertainties because I don’t know their bloody answers, much as I’d bloody well like to. Where’s God in all this uncertainty?
I don’t know. Alls I know is that my current MO aint workin’, as I said. So I blog, and I call it out. I do yoga, and I meditate. I speak to my friends, the ones who seem to get the complexities that accompany complex-PTSD. I try to do exercise. I catch up with the mental illness support group I organise through meetup.com, and I relate to how painfully normal they all are, these young people with mental illness. And how misunderstood they are, too. I try to create the environment in my life that I didn’t get as a kid and growing up. It’s slow going. God’s work is slow going. Not in my time, neither.
Serenity now, God!
I feel a rant coming on. It’s…it’s welling up and through my loins and in to my gut. It’s coming up and in to my belly and up, up in to my chest. I’m heaving and my throat is…it’s bulging, and my face is reddening. I feel it! Here it comes! An explosion of keyboard warriorism, a long and drawn-out cathartic release from the maddening shackles of routine life and 9 to 5s and yes pleases and no thank yous and do you want a receipt with that?…Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh zoooooeeeee! Can’t…not…rant.
Aaaaaand scene. So do you want to hear my rant? Here it is: I’m getting frustrated with all the mental illness stigma mental health awareness campaigns on social media and in public.I mean, I know I’m in a foul mood today, but what a crock of horseshit. Puh-lease. But before I projectile vomit my dirty, defiling rant on to your face and neck sir, allow me a couple of quiet disclaimers that shall serve as napkins for you to dab yourself with in a moment.
First, I run my own mental health recovery group for young people. It has over 250 members. In this way, I am on the frontline of what good mental health recovery and awareness involves. I also read a shit-tonne of books on mental health recovery. I’m in the thick of the battle for good mental health, as they (probably) say.
Second, if you haven’t already heard the gossip around the water cooler, or passed the notes in class or, if by chance, this is your first reading of my blog, I’ve got the mental illness bug. I am one of them. It’s not contagious in any literal sense of course, but if I had kids, I’m sure I’d find a way to pass it on (see argument below). It’s called Complex PTSD, it’s what “I have” and it’s spiritually stinky. I’d say I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but that’s a lie. I’m a vindictive prick sometimes – sorry in advance.
Third. I’m not saying that awareness around mental illness, and mental illness stigma, and mental health are bad things. Obviously they’re not, and when they’re done right, they help to enlighten people about the plight of the Other. But as I will at-times clumsily convey in this post, I do think that we need to take a harder look at ourselves before we attempt another half-arsed campaign.
Fourth and final napkin-of-sorts, I’ve been in multiple psych wards, as a patient and in the thick of it. So don’t talk to me about How Dare I Challenge a Good Thing. I been there, son, and I have the overpriced t-shirt, the matching pencil case, and the imaginary pink bicycle with tassles from the public hospital gift shop to prove it. OK?
With that out of the way, here goes. Brace yourselves. The majority of mental health awareness campaigns that I have come across, although well intended, are hypocritical and ineffective. They contribute to a “bigger picture problem” that few people are willing to look at. If we’re going to push for awareness around mental illness, start by looking at numero uno. Because the definition of mental illness, and the consequent target audience of such awareness campaigns can surely be broadened when we stop focusing on the “identified patients” and start looking at how we keep them sick in our addictive society, or by looking at how we, too are sick and in need of a hearty dose of recovery.
Addiction to alcohol and drugs found its way in to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, used by psychiatrists and psychologists and other health professionals to diagnose mental illnesses, some time ago now. But take a closer look at society and what it is addicted to – sugar, oil, caffeine, money, sex, relationships, power, even love, and the price we’re willing to pay to attain such things, and you start to wonder why the definition of mental illness is so narrowly defined. Why’s it only applied to the sickest of the sick? To be sure, I don’t know why. But it is. For now, I’ll leave the debate over the politics regarding how we define mental illness in the DSM to the deluded crooks who collude with insurance companies (Tsssss! Feel the burn!).
And for the record, please don’t get me wrong; I’m one of you. I’m certainly not holier than thou. I mean sometimes I’d love to be, but I’m not. I’m one of youse.
I’m just as messed up as youse guys.
I’ve got my share of addictions and they wreak havoc on my life all the same. But don’t tell me you don’t have any, please, because I’ll call your bullshit on it faster than a fat kid on a cupcake. In a general sort of way, I’m naming mine, which is more than I can say for the doctors who treat us, the lawyers who make our rules and the politicians who compulsively break these rules and then grin-fuck us for votes later.
The whole notion of a sick and addicted society raises some serious-ass questions about denial, man. I’m not interested in getting all Greenpeace on people’s hides, but the reality is that we’re abusing the planet, too. This isn’t a new fact. We know now more than ever that our resources are finite, but we go about digging up stuff and manufacturing delicious foods well and truly beyond our means, with little pause for the implications on our future. Why? Because the pay off is way too overpowering to walk away from. And what is that if not addiction? What’s not sick about that?
The unmanageability of it is truly mind-boggling. But alas we continue to spiral in to self-destruction because it’s just what we do. Capitalism’s one helluva monstrous wheel, and it’s been spinning so long and so hard that a) none of us really know how to stop it b) most of us don’t want to stop it, and c) we’re afraid of what the world – and ourselves – will look like if we do stop it. And don’t get me started on the heartbreaking dullness that is beauracracy, and the ways in which it contributes to our collective descent. Give me a large fuck-off book o’ rules and regulations and I’ll gladly bludgeon a bureaucrat with it.*
The system is hopelessly collusive in our collective mental illness, and we’re all up to our ankles in it. Though some people are swimming in it, and others are drinking from its fountain. So why, then, if we’re all in it, is the focus so painfully focused on the individual in these campaigns to eradicate ignorance about mental illness? Aren’t we all a part of the problem? That doesn’t seem fair. I share the belief that the majority of mental illness derives from our collective inability to sit with and regulate our unpleasant feelings (and heck, even some of our pleasant feelings, too).
And we learned to regulate our feelings from families – families that pass their very own brand of diseased thinking and addicted patterns from one generation to the next like some dusty banner that hangs in the hallway of our familial consciousness. I think that in true, individualistic fashion, we’ve managed to convince ourselves that mental illness is an individual problem. Something that an individual possesses, and that an individual can and should get help for. The onus is on you (but not me) kinda thing. But just don’t look at the family system. Or the societal systems, or the cultural systems. And shit, don’t look at the medical systems or legal systems, or economic systems that cultivate these mentally ill individuals. That would be inappropriate, or irrelevant, or it would be to miss the point entirely. No. It’s much easier to point the finger and say “You’re unwell. You need help. You should take these pills. You should go to hospital. You’re sick.”
What bullshit. Forgive me for expressing rather passionately my distaste for the apparent hypocrisy. If you’d wagered that I was furiously punching the keyboard to get my message across as I typed just now, well sir, you’d have won your bet. And for those who find it easier to dismiss my anger as symptomatic of daddy issues, or mummy issues, or family issues, well duh. That’s almost the point of my argument. Create as much awareness as you like around mental illness, but unless you start looking at yourself and the system in which you grew up in, nothing will change. Yes, the individual is indeed sick. But the individual doesn’t get sick unless he’s grown into a sick family. Families, too, can’t raise sick children unless they’ve been forced to swallow false medicines from an addictive society and its sick systems.
The solution. As someone who identifies as a sometimes-realist, an opportunistic problem-solver, and a would-be policymaker, you can’t have a rant unless you have a solution to the problems you’ve announced. And the solution for me is simple. Look at yourself. Start asking yourself the questions you’ve been avoiding most of your life. Learn to sit with what comes up. And for fuck’s sake, start meditating and stop running. That’s all meditation is; it’s not running anymore. I double-dare you, because shit, I’m still learning to sit with myself too.
Ask yourself the hard-hitting questions, the ones you don’t want to ask yourself. And I challenge you to notice how long it takes before you pick up your phone and google some shitty picture of Mariah Carey, or go to the fridge for some cheesecake, or flick on the telly. It’s easier to numb out or ignore the hard questions than it is to sit with the uncertainty of asking, and the apparent unbearableness of not knowing the answers. But ask yourself. Otherwise we’ll continue to be bombarded by these well-intended-but-ill-thought-out mental health awareness campaigns that really only scratch the surface of what we need to be aware of. Heck, I’ll have to be bombarded by these crappy mental health awareness campaigns, and I’m over ’em. So please. Talk to people you trust about these questions. If you don’t have people you can trust, acknowledge this, and then start doing your research. Find your community, your people.
What are the questions? Start with these.
Do I eat to numb out? Do I notice certain circumstances that prelude my desire to eat foods that, in the quantities I consume them in, can lead to my ill-health? Do I eat them anyway?
Do I pursue money at an impractical cost to my health? To my family? To my spirituality?
Do I have something outside of myself that I can rely on, or do I trust only myself? That is, do I have a spirituality that is benevolent, and for me?
Do I drink too much? Or more than I’d like or can control?
Do I isolate myself? Do I prefer my own company, with a fear of others, of intimacy, or of failure as the driving force?
Do I use sex for comfort, when what I need is to acknowledge my powerlessness in a certain situation? Do I pay for sex, at a detriment to my finances? Do I accept sex when what I really want is love?
Do I experience unmanageability over how I feel about other people? Over lovers?
Do I give myself over to others – in small ways or large – and does this leave me feeling resentful? Cheated? Fragile? Defeated? Abused?
Am I narcissistic? Is it all about me? When was the last time I asked somebody else how they were feeling, without expectation of a quid pro quo arrangement?
Do I have expectations of myself? Of others? Of circumstances? And are they reasonable? Do I project on to others what I myself lacked in some way growing up, or even something that I lack now?
What can’t I live without, and is this belief really true?
Can I be honest with myself about how I feel about minority groups? About gays? Blacks? Arabs? Homeless people? Justin Bieber? People from a lower socioeconomic group? What do I really disapprove of in these people?
Can I be truly honest with the people that I love, or do I hide how I feel for fear of rejection or abandonment? What do I do to quell these fears? Am I manipulative?
What am I really afraid of? What am I terrified to lose?
Am I comfortable with how I look in the mirror? Do I accept myself completely, or do I expect perfection?
It’s largely true: the unexamined life is probably not worth living. And ignorance is not bliss – not at the expense of individual sanity and our collective prosperity.
Deep breath in….And out. Thus endeth my at-times incoherent rant. I feel a little lighter now.
When I get agitated, I get stuck in my head. Oh, you do too? Not like me, I bet. I ruminate. In fact, so good am I at not feeling my feelings, and so competent am I at launching in to my head to avoid said feelings, I’ve literally been diagnosed with OCD by a psychiatrist in the past. Not recently, but, you know, in the past. (So I win.)
Crazy, huh? I coined a phrase that aptly describes this inner phenomenon: I’d rather think my thoughts than feel my feelings. Pretty good, ay? Catchy. I mean I’m pretty sure it’s my phrase. I haven’t heard anybody else use it before. Can I get that copyrighted? Thanks. It’s officially mine.
“I’d rather think my thoughts than feelings my feelings” – Daniel, from Me, you and the critics in my head
What might happen if I feel my feelings, dramatised by notorious weeper, James Dean.
Naturally, I like this saying because it rings very true; it’s very me. Quintessentially Daniel. I get so caught up in how I am going to manage my circumstances, whatever they happen to be at the time, that I forget (or make an unconscious decision) not to feel my feelings. It doesn’t work very well for me, truth be told.
As you might have guessed, my knowledgeable, omnipotent, and few-and-far-between Readers, herein lays the unmanageability. I don’t like my unpleasant feelings. Fear. Resentment towards self. Resentment towards others. Uncertainty – which, by the way, manifests at times as liquefied shit, a feeling of nausea in my stomach, or just plain old irritability and agitation, felt everywhere from my neck to my face to my back to groin. It’s enough to make you crazy. These sensations are my feelings, and goddammit they don’t feel good. And I want to feel good all the time. I want certainty and clarity and I want prosperity without any of the hard work those idiot successful people talk about. I want a no-risk, win-win situation. Is that too much to ask?
All delusions aside, I do find myself coming back to some pertinent and seemingly urgent questions. When the fuck’s it going to be my turn to get ahead in this shitty life? When’s it my turn to be prosperous? Such are the anxious and frustrated ramblings of my at-times incoherent head. Such are the thoughts, too, that cleverly mask the funky feelings in my body. They’re not pleasant feelings, so why feel them? To my unwell-at-times mind, it makes perfect sense not to go near my feelings. It’s airtight logic – how could it be wrong? Don’t like it? Don’t touch it! Easy.
The only problem with this logic is that it’s the same goddamn logic that’s kept me very, very unwell these last 29-odd years. If I don’t feel my feelings, then I don’t have an accurate gauge of who I am. Without feelings, I have no compass to navigate my internal world – or my external world. Without my feelings, I’m lost. And without my feelings, I’m only a few clicks away from turning in to Dexter Morgan, ridiculously fit, good-looking in an understated, nerdy-kind-of-way serial killer. Except he seems more well-adjusted than me…
OK, not really. Although sometimes I just don’t know. What’s wrong with not feeling your feelings?! Says my Sicker Self. Well, a lot, Mr. Daniel, if I may. It’s important for me to know what I’m feeling. They keep me safe from danger and they let me know when shit ain’t right. My feelings, when expressed appropriately and in a healthy way to my loved-and-liked ones, help me stay connected to other people. And staying connected is crucial to my recovery. I would say it’s one of my values. Yeah, it’s one of my values. Let’s go with that.
Enter, though, my fear of intimacy with others. That flaming queen, Oscar Wilde, once said that he could resist anything but temptation. Likewise, I have a tendency to proclaim that I value intimacy and connectedness to others – but just so long as you don’t take another fucking step closer to me. That’s my version of intimacy, I say proudly and while smiling.
“I can resist anything but temptation” – Oscar Wilde, Irish dramatist, poet, and flaming queen.
But it doesn’t really work well, this approach, when it comes to friends and relationships. Demanding intimacy while at the same time dialing triple zero as others approach me makes for a very awkward, confusing dance. I’m sure it’s comical to watch…. But, no. It is a great thing, then, that I’ve developed some good friendships with people who can relate to this predicament. Or as Oprah might call it, fear of intimacy. In 12 step programs it’s called emotionalanorexia. I can identify with that.
Anyway, what were we discussing? Pizza? No – wait. Emotions? Ergh. Emotions. OK. I’ve been doing it tough with emotions lately. On the one hand my recovery hinges on my practicing feeling my emotions. On the other hand my recovery also hinges on recognizing when my emotions are becoming overpowering, and when it’s appropriate for me to self-soothe appropriately. You know, make phone calls, meditate, pray, do tapping, do havening, do body scans, etc. (Not booze or sex it up, or ruminate or numb out with pizza or any other mood-altering drugs, like ice-cream or binge-watching Game of Thrones, which is a very effective way to numb out, I’ve discovered).
Feelings. Let’s talk about them, then. With my contract ending in February, I’m feeling threatened. I feel like my recovery is being threatened. And my sanity. And it feels as though where I live is also under attack, too, because how in hell will I afford this lovely apartment without a job? Am I well enough to apply for and work a job that is more mentally challenging without the fear of another terrifying flashback?
I don’t know. I’m sick and tired of not knowing. I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. It’s draining, and it’s not fair. But what can I do but keep working at it? Language is important here, too. The words I use to evaluate my circumstances are important. So I’m writing this post today not to preach about recovery, although that can be very fun. I’m reminding myself to take little steps. Teeny, weeny, itty bitty baby steps.
And I’m reminding myself to have faith. And courage. And to stay connected to myself and to others through writing about it, and talking about it, and complaining (in moderation) to others about how unfair it all is. These are the pillars of my recovery, the tools for success, that will see me through to the other side of this unpleasant shit-storm.
“Oh no, look at me, I’m in a nutshell!” No, but seriously. Here’s how my blog is tracking. Neat trick, wordpress, neat trick.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,000 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 17 trips to carry that many people.
The whole notion of a sick and addicted society raises some serious-ass questions about denial, man. I’m not interested in getting all Greenpeace on people’s hides, but the reality is that we’re abusing the planet, too. This isn’t a new fact. We know now more than ever that our resources are finite, but we go about digging up stuff and manufacturing delicious foods well and truly beyond our means, with little pause for the implications on our future. Why? Because the pay off is way too overpowering to walk away from. And what is that if not addiction? What’s not sick about that?
Me, you, and the critics in my head. 